Abstract
Over the past few years, the issue of beach concessions caused several disputes in Italy among public authorities and economic operators. The following paper aims to give a contribution to the ongoing controversy over the management of Italian maritime domain. In particular, concession system governing recreational seaside facilities suffers from inefficiency, with the respective licenses that are allocated in front of extremely reduced fees. A non-market valuation of recreation value is performed for the coastline of Civitanova Marche: such value results to be much high when compared with state revenues coming from the collection of fees paid by concessionaires of seaside facilities over the corresponding area. In this sense, a reform of price mechanism established by law is strongly recommended.